nsteady, heroic indignation. They called
for drinks till the manager insisted that the place was closed. All the
while Babbitt felt a hot raw desire for more brutal amusements. When
W. A. Rogers drawled, "What say we go down the line and look over the
girls?" he agreed savagely. Before they went, three of them secretly
made appointments with the professional dancing girl, who agreed "Yes,
yes, sure, darling" to everything they said, and amiably forgot them.

As they drove back through the outskirts of Monarch, down streets of
small brown wooden cottages of workmen, characterless as cells, as they
rattled across warehouse-districts which by drunken night seemed vast
and perilous, as they were borne toward the red lights and violent
automatic pianos and the stocky women who simpered, Babbitt was
frightened. He wanted to leap from the taxicab, but all his body was a
murky fire, and he groaned, "Too late to quit now," and knew that he did
not want to quit.

There was, they felt, one very humorous incident on the way. A broker
from Minnemagantic said, "Monarch is a lot sportier than Zenith. You
Zenith tightwads haven't got any joints like these here." Babbitt raged,
"That's a dirty lie! Snothin' you can't find in Zenith. Believe me, we
got more houses and hootch-parlors an' all kinds o' dives than any burg
in the state."

He realized they were laughing at him; he desired to fight; and forgot
it in such musty unsatisfying experiments as he had not known since
college.

In the morning, when he returned to Zenith, his desire for rebellion was
partly satisfied. He had retrograded to a shamefaced contentment. He was
irritable. He did not smile when W. A. Rogers complained, "Ow, what a
head! I certainly do feel like the wrath of God this morning. Say! I
know what was the trouble! Somebody went and put alcohol in my booze
last night."

Babbitt's excursion was never known to his family, nor to any one in
Zenith save Rogers and Wing. It was not officially recognized even by
himself. If it had any consequences, they have not been discovered.

CHAPTER XIV

THIS autumn a Mr. W. G. Harding, of Marion, Ohio, was appointed
President of the United States, but Zenith was less interested in the
national campaign than in the local election. Seneca Doane, though he
was a lawyer and a graduate of the State University, was candidate for
mayor of Zenith on an alarming labor ticket. To oppose him the Democrats
and Republicans united